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WoW Insider had the chance to sit down with Ed Fries, the founder of the new and highly unique business FigurePrints. Fries is best known for his work at Microsoft on the original Xbox, but he hasn't been idle since he left the company in 2004. His newly launched service allows World of Warcraft players to 'print' their characters out as 3D sculptures. He and blogger Mike Schramm discuss the origins of the company, and the process used to make the figs: "At heart, it's basically an inkjet printer, which is pretty cool. It actually uses HP-11 inkjet printheads. But instead of printing on paper, it prints on a thin layer of plaster powder. So you have to imagine that there's a bay with a platform, and a spreader bar comes in and spreads a very thin layer of plaster powder, which has the consistency of flour. So it gets spread onto the platform, like a sheet of paper. And then the printheads come out, and they print right into that plaster. It sets the ink on top of it, and like paper it soaks into it-that plaster hardens."

What better way to remember the complete waste your life is sitting in front of a computer for hours and hours each day...

"Oh I've wasted my life..."

As opposed to someone whose life is so meaningfully spent trolling a message board? Oh yes, that's _got_ to be some achievement and valuable skills for life. How I envy you, sir;)

Newsflash: yes, the _whole_ purpose of it is to waste some time in a fun way. We already know that. And I'm writing that as someone who doesn't even play WoW any more.

Thing is, humans weren't built to sit and stare at the walls. Even spreading some fresh paint on them and watching it dry, isn't actually all that exciting;)

So we find things to fill our time with, that's more fun, and preferrably something different than what we do at work. You know, so those parts of the brain get some rest and some time to index and pre-process the information into permanent storage.

So some people sit at the couch and watch football. It's technically time wasted, but if they have fun there, that's what matters.

Some spend their life playing prom-queen, yakking the most recent gossip, and playing a complicated game of who's-popular-with-whom. It's rarely as useful as its proponents make it sound. Most of those people will give even less of a damn about you in a pinch, than your guildmates in WoW. Not saying that the latter is some gold standard of human empathy and helpfulness. More like that a clique of wannabe prom-queens is even more likely to just worry about their own "score" in that fucked-up game than about your problems.

In effect, that's mostly just another way to waste some time in a more entertaining way than watching paint dry.

Some people go sit on a lake's edge with a fishing rod, and pretend that it's some valuable survival skill (it isn't), or could feed a family (it doesn't), or that it builds character (it doesn't.) See, that thing doesn't really scale. We're too high a population, to feed ourselves with a fishing rod, and a too fucked up economy to buy anything with money earned selling that fish. The only way to make any money with fish is with either a fish farm, or a big fucking ship with nets and huge fridges. Unless you can afford either, you will _not_ keep your family fed with fishing, even in the most fantastic scenario imaginable.

Nope, that's just another way to waste some time in a way that the fisher finds more fun than watching paint dry.

Some people spend half of their free time fiddling with their car, and pretending that it makes them Real Men. Oh, and usually it comes with some pretense that it saves them such a huge heap of money. Newsflash: if it were about money, then get a second job in that time, and take your car to a mechanic when it breaks. Saving maybe 20 bucks on repairs even 1-2 times a year, at the expense of spending hundreds of hours in the garage per year, doesn't actually work out as great money/hour even in the poorest countries.

So, nope, that's another way to waste some time in a more entertaining way than watching paint dry.

Some go out in some god-forsaken woods or on some god-forsaken mountain and pretend that they're learning such great skills in the process. Well, yes, they do, except the catch is: the only times they'll ever use those skills is when they next do that highly unnatural exercise. There is _no_ time in a city when you'll have to find your way by seeing which side of the trees the moss grows on. And if you're into finding your way by the sun or stars, good luck with having line of sight or visibility for either. And here's another fun thought: you want _practical_ orientation skills? Get a GPS navigation sytem and learn to use it. _That_ is where orientation is at nowadays. So, anyway, it's skills that are in practice just as useful as my WoW skills: useful only when you go there again.

Yup, you've guessed my verdict: it's just another way people spend their time to h

This is a nice thought, but you can eat fish and feed your family, if you so choose. It helps to be good at fishing, which I am not, but my skilled relatives give away extra fish whenever they have a chance because they have more than they need. As much as I enjoy video games, there are more useful ways to have fun, if that's what you're arguing against.

As for wandering around the woods, the mountains, the sea... at a basic level that too gets at the same "fun" that, as you say, can be found playing a

Well, as I was saying, if for you that's fun, by all means, please do continue to do it. And taste being a subjective matter, well, yes, I do expect that a lot of people will find wandering around the woods in RL more satisfying than running around the virtual woods in WoW:)

This is a nice thought, but you can eat fish and feed your family, if you so choose. It helps to be good at fishing, which I am not, but my skilled relatives give away extra fish whenever they have a chance because they have more than they need. As much as I enjoy video games, there are more useful ways to have fun, if that's what you're arguing against.

But feeding your family on fish alone wouldn't be a great idea - it's not a very balanced diet. You'd need an income of some sort to buy vegetables and so

But I think I can safely say that nobody has ever had a peak experience of total peace, fulfillment, and understanding in front of either of those monitors. I'm not at all religious, but maybe that's the sort of feeling they have when they're tuned in to whatever they worship. Maybe someday, when we can jack into realistic VR, we'll be able to do it from home, but until then you will only experience the most base levels of "fun" if you never get out of your chair.

Not entirely sure what you were getting at with this remark, or into what gaming bracket you include yourself (hardcore/casual). But I'm both a hardcore gamer and an amature rock climber. Ppl, most anyway, do the whole nature thing for the rush they get. They don't climb MT Everest because it looks nice from the bottom. They do it for the rush.
Wierd because I get the same adrenaline rush I get from climbing up a black trail that I do from raping the hell outta a clan during a scrim in CS. Matter of fa

Good comment, I agree with most of what you say, but I have to point out one area where you're dead wrong:

Most of those people will give even less of a damn about you in a pinch, than your guildmates in WoW.

In my experience, and yes, I'm in a raiding guild that is currently raiding Black Temple and Hyjal, so I know a little bit about WoW, your guildmates in WoW don't give a flying fuck about you besides what you can do to help them get loot. Loot is pretty much all that matters in WoW, and this can be obse

On one hand, yes, the average WoW player seems to not care about anything except epic loot. I won't argue with you about that. It _is_ the truth.

On the other hand, I've ended up in a guild where "epic" was a forbidden word on the guild channel. Mostly formed out of people who had enough of the raiding guilds drama and obsessions. Some had founded a guild, and ended up kicked out of it, because they couldn't take part in _every_ _single_ MC raid. (Yeah, it was before BC.) Which I guess just confirms your point about most guilds.

But the fact remains, you do have a choice of people you associate with. If hanging around with a bunch of virtual sociopaths, who care only about their precious loot and who see your only value as helping them get it, starts to get on your tits, you can always find yourself a different group.

Of course that might mean kissing goodbye the chances of getting the missing pieces of your top tier gear. So I guess it's time to ask yourself what your priorities are.

Me, I actually found it a lot more fun to hang around people who actually act like a bunch of friends. I was actually glad to be rid of "contribution points", planned raid nights, peer pressure, and all that stress. It's actually more fun (for me) to know that if, say, my engineer made a rifle and scope for some newbie hunter, it's just, you know, because I like helping newbies. Not for 2 contribution points, not because they might have a high level alt to help me in return, just because I was bored enough to make a rifle for a newbie. Or maybe I'll go run a perfect stranger warrior through RFK for their armour quest instead of doing the raid of the day. Just because they asked politely and said "please." Pick their hunter friend too, because he wanted to tame one of those boars. Or whatever.

But I guess everyone's mileage varies, so I'm not saying that everyone should swear off their epic gear. Just saying that such guilds do exist. Whether you're crazy enough to actually want to be in one, that's not for me to decide.

I agree. I tried the Raiding Guild business and ended up feeling like a slave to the DKP grind, always having to stay on top of the DKP pile just in case that special epic dropped. I finally just walked away from the loot drama and my DKP and went back to my old guild of friends. We don't raid 25 mans, but I can grind like nobody's business so I have my epics, but they are all crafted, world drops or Arena pieces. I feel good about the fact that my characters still kick ass even without being in a 'leet

Apparently you have not been playing WoW long enough to get there is a world of difference between the 25 man raiders and the casual guilds. The large, "we have two groups raiding black temple" type guilds are definitely the way you describe them. I've met quite a few people like that in WoW who would fuck anyone over for a piece of purple, that doesn't mean it's the norm. I'm in a casual guild (biggest thing we do is raid karazhan, very infrequently) and it's completely reversed. I actually like these peop

Not in my mind: $115 could get me more than 10 months worth of game time.

Well, the alternatives, if you want something like this, are either learn to sculpt and paint a figure yourself, or pay someone else to do it.

If you were to hire a modeler to do it, most likely they'd be able to take some shortcuts to reduce their workload (for instance, using recast parts from existing figure kits to make the basic body form) but it'd still represent a whole lot of work. $100 would probably be a bargain if you went this route... The results you get would depend on how much you're willin

Must agree. I'm also a modeler (mostly figure and sci-fi subjects. I do a little WW2 and modern general aviation too), and being used to the cost of resin garage kits, this doesn't seem all that bad. To put into perspective: I paid $80 for a 1/72nd scale BSG (New Series) Viper Mk II kit that is about 5 inches long. I've seen PLENTY of figure kits go for at or above $200. Dropping $100 on a nice little figure like this is not bad at all.

Well, I guess it boils down to whether you need it or not. Bang/buck is a very variable thing, especially in a matter of personal tastes where everyone has another idea of what the "bang" is.If you're into such figurines, yeah, it's not a bad price at all. If you don't, then it is.

If you always wanted such a figurine, yeah, it beats sculpting one yourself. But even there it forks. For some people it's doing it that's the fun, not the owning the figurine.

If you're into such figurines, yeah, it's not a bad price at all. If you don't, then it is.

If you're not into such figurines then the price doesn't matter.:)

If you always wanted such a figurine, yeah, it beats sculpting one yourself. But even there it forks. For some people it's doing it that's the fun, not the owning the figurine.

Well, certainly that's something I can relate to. Generally I'd rather build than buy. But even among people who spend a lot of time building, painting, even modifying models, the idea of actually building one from scratch remains a significant hurdle - whether because they lack the skills to do it right or because the idea of trying simply intimidates them...

Basically anybody, whether they're a builder or not, has to deal with their own

There's quite a significant difference between play time on a mass production game and a custom figure. The game can be made affordable through economies of scale, custom figures really can't, even with this technology. For what it is, it's incredibly inexpensive.

That doesn't mean you have to buy it, or like the price, but please understand that there are limitations on what's a realistic expectation for custom products.

Oh no, I grasp it. I was trying to be pithy and judging by the comments, either everyone missed it or no-one but me so far in this thread plays WoW and has to budget that $15 a month. Paying on a month-to-month or using gamecards for bimonthly payments, $110 is about 10 months of playtime. Ask a heroin junkie if he would rather buy $110 worth of junk or if he'd rather buy $110 of something concrete that deals directly with his habit (say, a golden syringe) and he's gonna go for the junk (or steal something

OK, I get that. I don't think this guy has anything to be worried about. He's got more orders than he can deal with even if his products are priced out of the range of a lot of players. But if you've got years invested into your character, then compared to the cost and effort, the statue is pretty inexpensive.

Maybe not, the article links mention they're limiting to a 100 per month production run. Subtracting out the materials, and they're probably making a few grand a month. Not bad for a single person but it probably wouldn't pay for the 3d printer lease.

It's inkjet printer heads and inkjet printer ink. They've got a platform that they spread plaster powder on. When each layer is printed with the ink, it soaks into the plaster powder, which then hardens.

They are certainly using a ZCorp [zcorp.com] printer. To the best of my knowledge, ZCorp still is the only manufacturer to make a multi-color 3D printer. These would be easy to print ( I run a zcorp machine). It is hard to judge the print volume from the photos, but it appears to be a pretty fair price considering the cost of the machine, materials and post processing time.

Don't know about life-sized, but I do wish they had some choices as to scale. I know that they are done to scale with each other, but they look like they're 1:8 or maybe 1:10 scale. I build and collect figure models and prefer to keep all my stuff in 1:6 scale:(. I'd certainly pay extra for the larger figure.

I've actually used this process on a couple of projects that I've worked on, and every time I walk through the exhibit hall at Siggraph I find myself hoping that a desktop model will reach somewhere around $1k soon.

Currently, it's an imprecise science -- you have to make certain that your model is "watertight" -- meaning that it registers as a solid object when passed to the fab software. You also have to thicken things like teeth, swords etc because the glue process makes thin items rather brittle.

Depending on the fabricator, you might have to paint the model after the fact, and on a whole lot of these you actually need to sand and prime the finished figure as many of the fabricators leave a sort of "fuzzy" surface that needs to be smoothed to look good.

Anyhow, it's a really cool tech for concept art and rapid prototyping, and if you've got the skillset to watertight models you create, you can have your 3DS/Maya etc models printed pretty reasonably ($45-150ish depending on bounding box volume).

I've seen some models from the Zcorp machines and while impressive, they have a definite layering to them. On an 8" tall figure, it's not any more distracting than the naturally rough texture of the rest of the model, but at these tiny scales the character's face will probably be distorted.

I've seen their promotional images (which aren't very large) and the models look pretty good (color bleed is a bit much in places), but I can't tell if they are doing something (like sanding) to get rid of that stratif

I've been using the intertubes long enough that I rarely feel the need to go all Grammarian on anyone, but this one is a peeve for some reason. So I'm going to throw a few karma points under the bus and get it out of my system.

WoW Insider had the chance to sit down with Ed Fries, the founder of the new and highly unique business

"unique" means one of a kind, alone, as in singular. You really cannot modify that aspect of it. "Very unique" means "very one of a kind" and makes no sense. It's one of a kind, or it isn't. If it isn't singular, then it may be "very unusual", but it isn't unique, let alone "ver

People pointing that out is a pet peeve of mine. Under the strict definition, anything and everything is unique. Even if it isn't immediately apparent, each object has a unique history, a unique position, a unique trajectory. Any sufficiently complex object has a unique structure, even if the differences are subtle. Everything as complex as a human being is unique in a billion small ways.

Thus, a word like unique becomes meaningless when applied rigidly. We acknowledge that everything is unique in som

Of the numerous players I've met in virtual and real life since starting MMOs in 1997, I think every single one of them would jump at the chance to have something like this: a little piece of the virtual world you can touch. This will attract the same people who played and collected games with "feelies"(tokens included in RPGs to enhance your connection to the game) like the Infocom Wishbringer and Origin's Ultima series.

I'm quite certain this company will be overwhelmed with people waiting at the door f

I'm not trying to be annoying but this tech is not that cutting edge. Companys that make miniatures for games use just about this same thing all the time and have been for a while.
All that being said - it still is pretty cool to seeit being used in the fashion.